Homicidal_Cherry53 wrote:Phew, sorry it's taken me weeks to respond here. I've been completely overloaded with homework for the past week.
Has it been weeks? I lose track of time. Time is largely meaningless to me(hence my sanity[ignore that, it doesn't apply to anything]). Besides, as I said, I'm busy with school as well, so I understand.
I'm not precisely sure why(not that I shouldn't), but I like you. You're' interesting.
(if you haven't noticed I'm really weird. And rather blatant about things at times.)
Hopefully my irrational affection for you(and I don't mean that in any way that could be negative or weird. I know how people jump to negative/weird conclusions.) doesn't cloud my debating skills.
FinalEnigma wrote:
(happy birthday, btw. Did you have a good party?[hopefully with no illegal drinking, young man. (I said I wouldn't patronize you. That doesn't mean I can't tease.
So you're bringing the beer next year, right?
First - given that you're in the US(I presume you mean that America), the drinking age is still 21, so you've got a few years yet.(I just googled to make sure the law was national) I'm not going to go getting arrested on your behalf.
Second - eww, Beer!
I prefer whiskey, although I don't actually drink.
You are doing a study on pain and pleasure. two guys sign up to help out. You put each of them is separate rooms, blindfolded. then you walk in and punch one of them in the face(guy A), and ask him to tell you how much that hurt on a scale of 1-10. for the second guy(guy B), you send in a beautiful woman, who takes off his blindfold and kisses him passionately.
Okay, the next day comes around, and you do the same thing.
then the next day, and the next, for 28 days.(I don't know why the hell guy A keeps coming back. maybe you're paying the guys a lot).
on the 29th day, you walk in and punch guy B, the one who's been being kissed this whole time, then also go in and punch guy A. You ask each one to tell you how much it hurt on a scale of 1-10. Guy A, the guy you've been punching for a month, is going to report a drastically lower number than guy B. Guy B suffered way more from that punch than guy A, who was accustomed to it.
Okay, now tell me which guy you would rather be. The guy who got punched every single day for a month? or the guy who only got punched once? I think the answer is obvious.
Yes, I would much rather be guy B (is the position still open?
), however, what if this example were taken to the extreme. What if (hypothetically of course) we, from birth, give one child everything he could ever want. For his entire childhood we fill his every whim and do everything possible to make him happy (whether or not giving your kid everything they want actually makes them happy is debatable, but let's leave that for another time). Then, we take everything away from him. We take away every bit of security and stability he has and throw him into the world with nothing but the clothes on his back. For the first time in his life, he will not be able to get what he wants on demand. He will have to do without and it will be so completely foreign to him that he will have a very difficult time dealing with it and, without any money or way of making money, he will likely have to do without for quite some time.
Take another child and give him only the bare necessities from birth (food, water, basic shelter, clothing, medicine if he needs it, basically whatever it takes to keep him alive and healthy and nothing else). Then, at the end of his childhood, take everything away from him and leave him with nothing but the clothes on his back. He would likely be much better off than the child who was given everything, having learned to do without for almost two decades. Not being very dependent upon his "parents", he is also probably self-sufficient to a certain degree. Whatever suffering he experiences would not only be much less exaggerated but would be for a much shorter period of time. In this case, past suffering and pain actually lessened the suffering experienced by this person, while greatly increasing the suffering experienced by the other person.
This, however, is a very specific example, and I am willing to admit that my point (my axiom) is not applicable in many cases. You made good points (throughout the rest of your post and above) and I agree that an evil God would probably have little use for happiness. Outside of a few exceptions, earlier happiness does not make pain greater. This alone, however, does not mean that an evil God is illogical.
I take this to mean that you accept that creating happiness for the purpose of increasing overall suffering is incorrect? I'll grant for the sake of continuance that there are exceptions(though I'm not convinced there are, I don't need to prove it if you agree to the above), but since there are only a few exceptions, overall the tactic of creating happiness to increase overall suffering would be a failure.
To me? Quite so. it did. Love did save me from just such a bleak and hopeless place. In people who are depressed, the chemical imbalance is always there. in some people it's the cause, in others it's a result, which turns into a cause and keeps them stuck in their depression. That's why drugs work. they try to fix the imbalance so the person can function, while they take care of the initial cause through therapy or whatever, and eventually no longer need the drugs.
But love - there are degrees of love, and there are degrees of depression. Love releases chemicals in the brain, so does depression. If love is releasing happy-chemicals and sitting you solidly on cloud nine, you can't be depressed. Its true. Back when depression still had a hold on me, my worst times were late at night, lying in bed. But I could think of her, and it didn't matter. Nothing could, or can, touch how she makes me feel. It's just a great happiness that wells up and fills your chest, and you smile and curl up, and drift happily off to sleep.
Love can't cure a mind that doesn't function properly. It creates endorphins, yes, but it can't cure severe mental illness.
That actually depends on your definition of severe mental illness. Love won't cure schizophrenia, of course, but depression I'm convinced it can, if not cure, play a large part in helping to cure. Case in point here being myself.
I was depressed for years, I don't recall if I've said in this thread how many, but it doesn't really matter. I went to psychologists and therapists and such, but that didn't help. I tried many medications, but they didn't help.
Now, medications are used in the treatment of depression - note I don't say they cure it, because they don't.
The very vast majority of depression is caused by something circumstantial (by this I mean an external circumstance[abuse spouse or school bullies or something] or internal circumstance[self abuse, lack of self worth, lack of confidence]), rather than a chemical imbalance. The vast majority has a root cause other than chemical imbalance, and this root cause CAUSES a chemical imbalance, by overproducing sadness hormones, and under producing happiness ones.
What medication does, when it works, is to fix the chemical imbalance temporarily, but it won't fix the root cause - that's up to you. We are never going to invent a pill that stops an abusive husband(well, except maybe poison). They way they tell it to you is the circumstance makes you depressed, the depression saps your will, and the medication lifts the sadness enough for you to fix the circumstance that's causing the depression.
In anybody who was depressed and then got better, this is why. an actual chemical imbalance in the brain that causes and maintains depression by itself is very rare(and usually genetic), and if such people stop taking pills, they just become depressed again.
Yes, the bible so states, but first, that statement is so vague as to be meaningless. It could mean that we physically look like God, it could mean that we are capable of love and hate, like God, it could mean nearly anything, but I think it would be hard pressed to mean that he made us imperfectly. "Oh, the baby is just the image of his father, they are both so imperfect!"
And second, when did we start assuming the bible? I thought we were talking about possibilities, not locking ourselves into something to narrow as assuming the bible was true. Be adventurous! play with philosophy itself, stand on your own feet rather than someone else's(even if it is God's).
I'm not assuming the Bible, I'm merely using it as an example to show that there is precedent for an imperfect God. I only referenced the Bible to give it more legitimacy, as my last suggestion of an imperfect God was dismissed for being improbable and esoteric. It is entirely within reason to think that God did not have control, that he did not intend for us to be able to feel happiness, but it was just an unintended side-effect of our existence.
Alright, I'll acknowledge. There isn't much wiggle room for me here. I am forced to concede that a God could theoretically be capable of creating humanity in a general sense but incapable of physically writing our genetic code(or making mistakes in this) or some such and that could result is us having undesired or unexpected attributes.
But I'll note this is only possible with an imperfect, limited God.(pretty severely limited to claim the title of 'God') But again, possible.
Really? You would make such a snap judgment? Be careful before judging my alien civilization so quickly. What if they police the galaxy, preventing wars and saving millions? or offering the best medical technology to anyone in need? Are they still so evil, just because of the one thing they do wrong?
Assuming we're still using the general morals of our society to judge good and evil (if we are to bring in personal moral views, I get the feeling this debate might lose focus), then yes, they are evil. We, as a society, condemn genocide (usually through hindsight, but that's besides the point), regardless of what the parties involved do to help the rest of the world. No one considers Hitler to be anything but evil just because his regime made great scientific strides. In the same way, this civilization would be considered evil because of what they are doing to this other race.
perhaps these good deeds edge them into neutral? or maybe, just maybe, they are outside morality. Have no concept of it whatsoever and are A-moral, like a snowstorm. To them, maybe 'good' refers to how yummy something is, and evil is a few meaningless syllables.
Again, let's not drag relative morality into this as it will just become unbelievably muddled.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by speaking of dragging relative morality into this, but I do believe the prospect of an A-moral God is eminently relevant(since this is sort of where I've been slowly going the whole time).
In a book I once read, they discussed the possibility of finding an alien which was some sort of bacteria, yet sentient, and, being a bacteria, couldn't really die and was immortal(it just replaced parts of itself). Since it couldn't die, it had no concept of death or killing, so it could go about killing people without understanding what it was doing, yet be an intelligent, sentient creature.
Couldn't you, in the same vein, have a creature that has no concept of evil? or of harming another being? If a being were all powerful, invincible, unkillable, and unharmable...could it not easily have no sense of what harm even is?
And lacking a sense of what harm or injury, or killing is - how could it have a sense of right and wrong? Nothing we view as evil could cause it harm, so it would not likely view any of these actions as harmful. Steal from it? does it even have posessions? if it does, it can just make a new one. Cause it pain? you can't. Kill it? nope. emotionally abuse it? irrelevant.
How could it have a concept of good and evil if good and evil simply don't apply to it?
We do not hate others because of the flaws in their souls, we hate them because of the flaws in our own.
